


Sovereignty

by OccasionallyCreative



Series: Sovereignty [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Lightsaber Battles, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Sexual Content, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 16:02:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13034601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionallyCreative/pseuds/OccasionallyCreative
Summary: Kylo Ren is alerted to an intruder in the throne room.





	Sovereignty

**Author's Note:**

> BEWARE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE, FOR HERE LIE SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI.
> 
> So yeah. I have feelings. A lot of them. This is the messy mass of them.

“Supreme Leader summons you,” says a faceless trooper, marching past the threshold of the training chamber. Kita Ren whirls on the ball of one foot, bleeding from her bottom lip, spitting on the floor as she wipes her brow.

“The Supreme Leader is _here_ ,” she says, her lip curled into a snarl while the other Knights of Ren pause, gathering around her. Their eyes swing to their commander. Kylo stands off to the side, his saber clipped at his side and his hands folded behind his back.

“Supreme Leader summons Kylo Ren,” replies the trooper, as if in clarification. Kylo finally lifts his head. His facial expression barely moves, despite the absurdity of the trooper’s claim. His Knights know the culprit already. Kita raises her hand, twisting her wrist gently, her eyes directed towards the trooper. Kylo glances at her, and her body freezes. The trooper remains unmoved and repeats the message.

Fury sparks in Kita’s eyes.

“Continue,” Kylo orders his Knights in reply, leaving the training chamber. Behind him, he hears lightsabers rush together in a clash.

Heading down the corridor, he waves a hand in the direction of the trooper.

“Go to quarters,” he says, without patience.

He walks quickly, his fists clenched, his arms swinging at his sides. The corridor is long, wide, and officers pass him with their eyes hidden below their caps. Only Hux looks him in the eyes, and that is to question every decision made.

Kylo snarls, flicking his wrist to get rid of the image. The Force spikes and an officer trips, skidding across the floor, their eyes lifting in fear towards his leader as they lie on the ground, felled. He ignores their plight. He ignores too, the guards standing watch at the turbolift. He steps inside, standing in silence as the lift ascends, lights of the ship flashing intermittently over his face.

 _Ben_ , whispers her voice. He draws his jaw tight, inhales a breath.

He lets it out, moments before the lift doors open. He walks across the bridge, the ship’s engines humming distantly. They expected him. The high arched entrance to the Supreme Leader’s throne room slides open.

 _Ben_ , comes the whisper again.

There are no Praetorian guard here anymore, stood in form around the black throne that reaches high into the chamber ceiling, the black of it spreading over the chamber floor.

Kylo’s upper lip curls with a growl.

“Stormtroopers,” he spits with venom, approaching the throne, his hand sliding towards his saber, “are not your messengers.”

She, little desert rat, sits in his place. Nonchalantly, leaning forward with her feet placed an equal distance apart. In her fingers is a fruit that bleeds red. She scoops out its innards with her nails, hooking its flesh with her fingers, her skin stained crimson as she lifts the fruit to her mouth.

“Just your target practice,” she says through the mouthful of food. At her side lies her saber. It is pointed towards her. A beam of blue could slice through her stomach and cut her into two. His anger spikes again, and the little rat merely continues to eat.

The red juice spills onto the cushion of his throne. Kylo takes a further step forward.

“Get up.”

She raises her chin as she stares up at him, her lips stained with the fruit.

Vines prick at his Force signature. He pushes back, and he can feel her disapproval as her signature sinks back, though she sits still and impassive.

She’s so calm, where he vibrates with anger, restless from her presence alone. Sitting in the place where he sits, where his _master_ sat--- he’d chosen her, turned away from his master. She’d stared at him, and rejected him.

What is worse is that he knows why.

 _See ya around kid_ , says a memory, a projection of the man who’d thought to kill him.

“Get... up.” Kylo bites on the last word, moving up the step towards the plinth. Her eyes flick over his body, following his movements. She leans back as he leans forward, pressing his grip onto both arms of the throne, his gloved wrists grazing against her elbows. 

She remains unmoved.

“Sometimes, you lie awake.” He doesn’t have to look into her mind to know this. He sees it in her. When the treacherous Bond keeps them both awake and they stay in silence, looking at one another while their separate worlds swirl in grey mist around them. He sees it when she trains. Alone, she practices form after form in artless swings but with feet that move with grace. Years of trekking through the sand, the water of the desert ever shifting with the winds gave her that grace.

"You lie awake and wonder if I was lying."

He sees it when the Force comes to them before a battle between the Resistance and the First Order is to start. Hux asks him the strategy, and he sees her in return, the only still figure among moving grey.

He feels too much like Ben when he sees her like that, amidst shadows.

“I know,” she says, reading not his thoughts but merely his features. He hisses, biting his bottom lip. He’s so _open_ when she’s near. If his Knights saw him now… oh, it would be mutiny. He sinks his grip against the throne’s arms, the tips of his leather-clad fingers brushing over the glossy black.

Kylo ducks forward, his eyes on hers, as he sinks his teeth into the fruit. The juice trickles down between her fingers down her pale arm in streaks, dripping off into her lap. He swallows back the bite.

“Oh, scavenger. I don’t lie to you.” He leans closer still until they are inches from one another, air lingering between them and the high ceilings of the chamber sinking down to where their foreheads touch. He draws back at the last moment, crossing his ankles, sighing. Less of Ben Solo, more of the Supreme Leader he is meant to be.

“I never would. I never can.”

He smirks then. Her eyes flash in return, black where normally they’re a brown too warm with hope for a galaxy broken beyond repair. Her short hair snakes against her neck, coming to rest at her collarbone. He lifts a hand, his fingers reaching forwards to brush it back; she stops him with a grip on his wrist formed by an ice-sharp shard of the Force which slices up through his palm, over the back of his head.

He trembles where he is now stuck, stood above her, his fingers half-curled in a flex of pain.

Her foot slams into his middle, and he shoots back across the amphitheatre. The space where he holds court. Winded, coughing, he rolls onto his side, watching her through his narrowed eyes. Rey, of Jakku. Born on Jakku, sold by drunks to be no-one, just like them. But nothing on Jakku could compare to her power.

Two years later, she sits on his throne while he is the one who fights for the true cause: the annihilation of old, to let a new order grow.

She rises to her feet, picking up her saber.

It is junk, like Jakku. Not the smooth outline of his grandfather’s saber or the jagged edges of his own. It’s a saber carved into her old quarterstaff, the only thing she could stand to keep from Jakku. It reminded her of survival.

That was the first thing he saw when the bond opened once more to them. She carved machinery inside the staff to slide the beating heart of a kyber crystal, fresh and pristine, inside. She paused, sensing his presence, the shrinking of both their worlds.

“Hello Ben.” She greeted him that way, with an aftertaste as bitter as wine.

She stands, watching while he struggles to his feet.

His lightsaber crackles.

Hers hums.

His lip curls into a snarl. Her kyber crystal, so crudely perfect, contained in the staff. Two beams of blue light protrude from either side.

They charge one another. She swings her saberstaff in an arc from left to right; he cuts her off with an opposite smashing blow, causing her to stumble back. She shrieks at the block, whirling round to face him again, her staff moving with her, both blades humming. Her chest moves with heavy breaths.

He steps to the side, moving a half-circle around her. She jabs her left blade forward, a smile creeping onto her lips as he dodges, returning to his previous position opposite her.

He could test her. And he does, turning on the ball of his foot, his saber leading his movement. Starting low at his hip, he brings his blade up to over her head. She yelps, twisting her saberstaff so the right-sided blade meets his, its sparks littering the ground.

In another life, which is what it seems like, when she was dressed like a child of the desert, she was bathed in lilac, a mixture of blue and red, and now she’s bathed in it again. Her face contorts as she slides the right-sided blade from his, ducking away from the immediate descent of his blade, switching her saberstaff between her hands to land a punch to his gut.

He dodges the blow, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren grinning again as he moves back, appraising her as he twists his saber between his fingers.

“Hand-to-hand? That’s cheating.”

It’s the quick way to winning a fight.

She swipes low with her left-sided blade in response, forcing him to jump back to avoid the strike.

The crackling stops then, in the silence, and after a moment, the hum of her saberstaff leaves the scene too.

This is how it goes. They find each other, in the Force, on planets, in battles and they always survive. They always endure.

“You don’t have to endure,” she says into the silence. She steps forward. “There’s another way.”

“There is no other way,” he hisses, his step forward more of a jerking stumble. He straightens his back, standing opposite her while she looks up at him. He thinks of the lift, when she stood to him so closely he could smell the salt of the ocean in her skin, and how her eyes were filled with hope. They shone with hope when they fought together, with Snoke’s body on the throne where she sat only moments ago. And he snapped the hope with one word.

He begged, and she fought in return.

She’s fighting still. Still wanting to save his soul.

“I don’t want to fight.”

“Forgive me for thinking different,” he says dryly.

She tilts her head then, her eyes narrowing. She lifts her hand. He sees it coming. He could do what she did, for touch is not what any of them do, they’re always just two shades shifting among shadows---

She slides her hand against the line of his jaw, cupping his cheek. His breath trembles. His whole body vibrates. Kylo Ren peels away.

“Tell me this isn’t okay.” It’s not a plea, nor a question. It’s a concern, and that bites harder than any saber strike.

She is stronger than he can ever hope to be.

It happens in a blur. He ducks his head, she reaches up and his hands curl around her thighs, picking her up as if she is nothing (but she’s not, she’s everything, not just to him but to the whole galaxy and that’s one truth among many he hates to admit because if he dares stop or pause, Kylo Ren will crumble and Ben Solo will rise once and for all), and their mouths connect. It is a paradise that lasts both hours and moments; in truth, it is merely a passing of breaths between them, and it is she who draws back. Still strong, still calm while he is moments from collapse.

He sinks to his knees with her still in his arms. Her legs uncurl from his waist, her thighs coming to straddle his lap, while her hands caress the path of his back, the slope of his shoulders and she presses her cheek to his heartbeat.

He still has a heartbeat, but as she holds him, it feels like every beat is for her.

That is another truth. It is all for her. He still sees that vision, even now his master is dead. He leads the First Order, he will inherit the wounded stars. But to heal a wound, you must first pluck out the implement. The implement is generations old. He knows what he must do.

He will do it.

But only when she comes to him.

Even the dark side has hope.

Her thumb draws over the hollow of his cheek, her fingers scratching lightly at his temple and he realises the wetness on his face is his tears. Hot, sharp tears.

This time, it is not a blur. There are no shadows, no grey but his dark connecting with her light. His mouth presses to hers, and she is so real underneath him, sharp cheekbones and muscle. The tip of her nose, pressing into his cheek, her rough palms brushing past his cheek with just her calloused fingertips remaining. He peels off his gloves before he runs his hands past the material of her outer robes, scrunching the material of her inner top in his grip, urging her closer to him. She is so real, smelling of snow and ice, and he sinks his fingers underneath her top to feel her skin. Just a scrap of it.

He finds himself smiling against her lips.

She feels it, and smiles in return, brushing the tip of her nose against his as she pauses for breath.

 _You’re just as much a scavenger as me_ , she thinks through the connection.

His eyes open, flicking up to meet hers. His mother did the same when with his father. He saw them, occasionally, when they kissed on his mother’s arrival back from the growing Republic. His father would stroke her hair and kiss her, brushing his nose against hers when she complained of his beard.

The gesture is so domestic. It feels like a blaster bolt, sheathing between the two of them.

In the silence, growing bigger and bigger that he fears he might not be able to contain it, she presses her forehead to his.

“I’m not asking for you to fight.” Kylo closes his eyes, letting himself get lost in the voice.

“My Knights will be here. Any moment,” he adds, a weak addition to an already crumbling threat.

“I was wrong. I thought you could be the hope we needed.” He holds the back of her head, drawing her closer and pressing his lips to her forehead. She sinks into him again, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and hugging him tightly.

“What do you want?”

“To live.”

“You can. With me.”

She cups his face in her hands again, tilting his head to look at her, to properly look at her. “That’s not living Ben.”

They exchange kisses again, the embrace gradually becoming more heated. His hands return to her back, and she has one hand in his hair again while her other pushes past his tunic to his trousers. She pulls at the fastening as he kisses her neck, her collarbone; she sinks onto him with a sigh that catches in her throat. For a moment, he freezes, wondering whether or not to follow her into this oblivion, but the answer is so obvious that the moment is microscopic and unnoticed by them both.

He wants her, so badly.

The rhythm is clumsy, two bodies knowing what they need to do, but two minds unused to what is supposed to happen. He comes, with a wave of exhaustion overwhelming him. She fiddles with strands of his hair as he slumps against her chest, panting.

“You didn’t…”

“No.”

He’s so ashamed, guilty that she didn’t come, that he lays her on the ground before his throne in the amphitheatre where Hux obediently rattles off military plans, and he, Ben Solo, slides her trousers down past her hips. He doesn’t know what he might do, except that he simply wants to kiss her and have her scent thick in his throat.

He tastes his cum on her, a confusion of him and her, and he swallows it all as she arches her back, coming with her teeth biting into her hand.

And, for a single sparkling second, he understands what she means by living.

It terrifies him.


End file.
